When I think back to this first visit to Poland, I begin to realise how much we actually got through. One of these legs was a visit to Ania’s Grandma or Babcia as they say. This post will actually encompass a few experiences, I can’t remember whether it was a night-time visit or late afternoon but it was certainly dark and foggy, and the village of Czarna (Black) was just a 15 minute train journey from Tarnow.
Babcia met us off the train and her flat is right next to the train station. The flat itself is very similar to Ania’s parents (but older) one main hallway with a bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom stemming off from it.
The thing that struck me the most when we entered the hallway was all the jars lining the bottom of every wall. Jars full of conserved jams of many different varieties, Gherkins and mostly mushrooms. It’s fair to say that her favourite pastime was foraging and pickling, I realised shortly afterwards that she was a local authority on the quality and suitability of mushrooms. People came up to her in the street, asking her opinion on whether the giant mushroom they was carrying was suitable to eat.
Now you see her now you don’t
She took us picking mushrooms on one trip. We parked down a track on the edges of a forest, got out and started to prepare ourselves. I bent down to tighten my laces and when i looked up i was like ” err…. Where’s Babacia?” Ania started to laugh ” don’t worry about her, she’ll meet us back here”
As we walked off the beaten track through the tree’s, we scanned the floor in vain for mushroom’s, occasionally Ania found a cluster of them, I on the other hand yelped with glee when finally i spotted some, unfortunately for me they turned out to be poisonous. I learnt that caution must be taken, because to eat the wrong one could be fatal. Not just the mushrooms are dangerous though, Ania told me a story once of her grandma pulling her out the way of a rearing snake ready to strike. After what seemed like hours, but in actual fact was about 45 minutes, we found our way back to the car. Babcia was already stood there waiting for us, I thought that we had collected loads, but to my embarrassment, Babcia had collected about 5 times as many as us.
Most of our visits had the same routine, sit around the living room table and ply Malenki with liquors, advocates and Brandy’s of many varieties. I tried my best to sip as little as possible, but given that we spent hours there and of course I didn’t want to offend I always left a little tipsy.
I’m not actually joking on the above, but as Ania and her Grandma caught up on the local gossip, I think she saw it as a fitting way to keep me occupied. Which worked, in particular when I had broken my seal.
The other thing that happened in the early parts of my journey when I didn’t understand lots of Polish, was that she would speak to me really loudly and reeeaaaalllllllly sloooooowwwwwly, because obviously I would understand this no problem….. haha
A Glimpse of the soul
We were once looking at really old black and white family photographs, there was one particular in which there was a line of people stood to attention, I flicked past without another thought. It wasn’t until Ania said “did you see that” that i went back for a closer inspection. The people weren’t stood to attention, they were stood in solemn respect around the suited body of a dead man. Looking at the faces there was such an intense expression of grief that no words of mine can so eloquently justify, and which can only be brought on by the death of a loved one. I don’t think I ever found out who the dead man was on this or other similar photo’s that we came across, but to me it didn’t really matter. They were the most eerily personal things I had ever come across. Perhaps one day I will find out why they did this.
As I sat there on my first visit, I was watching Ania with her Babcia and the affection she showed to her still strikes a cord with me today, There was also affection in Babcia’s eye’s, but there was more, there was a depth to her gaze that one can only have through a lifetime of love, pain and sorrow…..
Many years before………..
Halina was born in 1933 in Warsaw, to a life of promise. Her father was a doctor in the main hospital, and as such was well-educated and relatively wealthy, and so from an objective viewpoint she could expect a comfortable upbringing.
Only a couple of years later the first tragedy to affect her life occurred, after a short battle with a kidney related illness her mother died, leaving her father to bring her and her older brother up. Life was tough and was made considerably worse when the second world war took hold. As the history books tell us Poland was quick to fall to the Nazi war machine and Warsaw as the Capital city was a source of major concentration. The Nazi’s would do Random acts of barbarianism or maybe cleansing as they would have viewed it. They would block both ends of a street and those caught in the middle would either be killed there and then or taken to a work camp. As you can imagine it was a very frightening time for the people living there. On a number of occasions Halina and her friends would be told by men that they didn’t know to go to the gates of the Nazi base and beg for sweets and chocolates. When they came back they were asked about what the soldiers were wearing and any other activity going on. The men of course were members of the Polish resistance, and the information used was to see if the soldiers were planning any actions. Early indications like this would help warn as many people as possible.
Maybe it was because of incidents like this that her father decided to take them to the Village of Czarna (Black) in the South of Poland. Another Doctor and a friend of his came from there, we are not sure what the reason for the visit was , but very soon afterwards he had married his friend’s sister. This was also a wealthy family and it was decided that Halina and her brother would stay in Czarna with their step mother whilst their father went back to work in Warsaw at the Hospital. But two more tragedies would befall Halina and her brother in quick succession…
Her Father was treating a Nazi soldier, I’m not sure what he was being treated for, but one thing is for sure, he had mental health problems and killed himself by jumping from the roof of the hospital. The Nazi’s believed that this was a conspiracy from the Hospital staff, and took the people involved away. Halina never saw her father again.
Around about the same time, what we believe were British planes were bombing Nazi targets nearby Czarna. Shrapnel from one of the bombs struck Halina’s step mother and took off part of her foot, she survived the original blast, but by the time the local doctors realised her wound was infected it was already too late.
Her Step mothers family took her in, but she was never really family and she had to earn her keep. They put her to work cleaning the house and working on their farm. She would look after animals, milk the cows and she would work in the fields. It was whilst living in Czarna that she experienced one of the most petrifying moments of her life. She was walking with a friend one day, when they were captured at gun point by a band of Nazi soldiers. Halina and her friend were made to walk for what must have felt like an age in front of a tank, as human mine detectors. This despicable cruelty can only be understood by those who have had to live and deal with it and it is incomprehensible what would drive a man, to force two young girls to put there lives on the line for them in such a fashion.
The end of the war brought with it new opportunities, and not all ethical. Halina suddenly became two years older. All of her documents were destroyed in Warsaw, there was no proof or record of her and so she had to be re registered. This enabled her new family to enter her birth year as 1931 and in turn make her old enough to start working.
She started to work in a shop and by the time she was in her late teens she was in charge and responsible for everything. The shop was the local supply not just for Czarna, but for the all the outlying villages too. In Communist Poland, you couldn’t just go into a shop, which was government-owned, and buy what you wanted, you had a certain allocation or a ration. For example a big ball of lard would come into the shop, Halina would have to divide it up into the allocated sizes and ensure people only got there share. Regular stock takes would be taken and if there was found to be more missing than on the ledger she would be in trouble. It was here that she met her future husband, who at the time was helping to build the famous Nowa Huta district of Kraków. Later he would work for the railways, which is the reason they had an apartment next to the train station, as they were built specifically for the railway workers.
Ania once told me that often in Communist Poland that when you had a job, that was your job, and it was yours for life. This proved true for Babcia Halina, who ran the shop until she retired many years later.
Thoughts
I have spoken to my own Grandparents in the past about life during the war, and I have learnt about it whilst in school and it was a tough and worrying time for most people, in particularly those with Sons and brothers away fighting. But we were never occupied, and what the older generation in Poland had to deal with, was tragic on a totally different scale. I had never really thought about this in great detail before, but the first hand accounts I have heard since starting My Polish Journey have increased my sentiment of the country and the people ten fold.
Malenki
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